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Tag: anheuser-busch

Anheuser-Busch InBev has offered to offload assets and licences in a bid to win regulatory approval for its $20bn takeover of Grupo Modelo, the Mexican brewer.

The world’s largest brewer by sales has offered to sell a high-tech brewery in Mexico and offload its US perpetual rights over the Corona and Modelo beer brands in response to the US Department of Justice’s lawsuit to block the takeover on antitrust grounds.

It also intensified its estimation of revenue and cost benefits by $400m to $1bn annually in the process. Carlos Brito, chief executive, said he believed the changes addressed DoJ concerns. “And the deal is even better because we uncovered more synergies,” he said.

The Justice Department sued on Thursday to block Anheuser-Busch InBev’s proposed $20.1 billion deal to buy control of Grupo Modelo of Mexico, arguing that the merger would significantly reduce competition in the American beer market. The deal, announced last summer, would add Corona Extra to the company’s formidable stable of brands, including Budweiser and Stella Artois.

But the Justice Department said in its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, that allowing the merger to proceed would reduce competition in the beer industry across the country as a whole and in 26 metropolitan areas in particular. The combined company would control about 46 percent of annual sales in the country, the government said, far outpacing Anheuser-Busch InBev’s closest competitor, MillerCoors.